Miami News Blog

Coral Gables Police Department

The BB gun shooter rode in this silver Volvo, cops say.

About 200 students are locked inside a gym at University of Miami as we speak, thanks to an alleged BB gun shooter. School President Donna Shalala sent text messages and e-mails around 3 p.m. today asking folks to "stay away from windows."

Students are becoming restless. From inside the gym, Senior Joey DiFrancesco says: "To be honest, I'm getting a little pissed off; it's just a B-B gun. I've got somewhere to be and were stuck in here."

It's the second time the campus has been on lock down in the past ten days. Two University of Miami students returning from a Miami Heat game were robbed at gunpoint around 10:30 p.m. on November 10. On campus, windows are shut, doors are locked and nobody is outside.

Update: The suspect is in custody and campus is now open.

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In a bizarre coincidence, two men died and another clings to life this morning after separate shootings 15 miles apart at virtually the same time.

The deadly hour was 6:30 a.m.

One shooting left 43-year-old Conrado Antigua Gallardo dead on the street at 1550 SW 131st Ct.. in Tamiami. Another hail of bullets, at the same moment, felled two unidentified men in a white SUV downtown, near NE First Avenue and Tenth Street.

Gallardo and another Hispanic man were heard arguing loudly in front of a squat home on SW 131st Court. Neighbors heard shots at 6:30 a.m., says Rebecca Perez, a Miami-Dade Police spokeswoman.

Police are looking for a 5'5", 180-pound Hispanic man in blue pants, a long-sleeve blue shirt, and a blue baseball hat, who was seen running south after the shooting.

Meanwhile, a white SUV slowed at a stoplight at NE First Avenue downtown. A car pulled up alongside and someone fired several shots into the SUV, says Officer Jeffrey Giordano, a Miami PD spokesman.

One victim died on the scene, and another is in critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Know anything about either shooting? Call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

This week's feature tells the story of a photographer-turned-pimp, a "mansion" full of prostitutes, and a big (albeit accidental) bust by Miami-Dade police officers.

The first page of L.G.'s diary.

​While reporting the story, New Times inherited some unusual files. They included pimp Hugo Gonzalez's "business" documents, which were as tidy as they were pornographic. (Think naked hooker photos next to the tax returns.) There were also receipts for his girls' STD tests, plastic surgeries, and hair colorings.

Diary entries -- taken from a box of evidence -- were the most personal. One journal came from a 17-year-old witness named "L.G," who informed cops that Gonzalez made her call him "Daddy." In the writings, she tallies all of the men she has slept with inside the million-dollar Glenvar Heights home. Then she lists the drugs she has done, and the money she has made. In a disturbing twist -- or should I say more disturbing? -- the entries are decorated with My Little Pony stickers, smiley-faces, and happy little hearts.

Here's a glimpse into L.G.'s mind. (Name has been removed; click to enlarge.)
More entries after the jump.

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Welcome to the hot seat, Miguel Exposito.

Just a few hours after Tomas Regalado named his choice for new chief of the City of Miami PD, the first murder of the not-yet-official Exposito era crackled across the police radio.

The details are still sketchy, but sometime before 8:15 p.m. a man was standing in front of his vehicle at 14th Ave. and NW 27th St. when bullets started flying.

The victim was hit multiple times. He was dead on the street by the time police arrived a few minutes later.

Police aren't releasing the name yet as they try to notify the man's family, says Officer Jeffrey Giordano, a Miami PD spokesman.

Exposito, meanwhile, is expected to be named chief at an 11 a.m. news conference today.

readyy aim via flicker cc

This past May, the New York Times quoted the property manager of Parkview Point Condo in Miami Beach. Rosa M. Rodriguez, age 60, told a sad story about being broke. The units around her were foreclosing, Rosa said, and she had to pay for the damages.

She explained to the Times reporter that she dislikes answering visitors' questions about crumbling ceilings at Parkview. "We're not going to tell them we don't have any money," she said. "That's embarrassing."

Well, the condo board might have been broke, but Rosa sure wasn't. According to Miami Beach police, she embezzled more than $50,000 from the elderly owners of units in the building. She was arrested and charged with organized fraud and first degree theft this past June. Miami media never reported it.

Says 55-year-old Parkview resident Tina Koperwas: "She cleaned out my mother's bank account."

Before the arrest, Tina called the police on Rosa several times. Now she says Rosa's "left hand man" - the new property manager - is retaliating against her.

​U.S. District Court Judge Joan Leonard handed out the first sentence to a member of the Liberty City Seven. Burson Augustin will serve six years in prison. Significantly less than the 30 years prosecutors wanted. Leonard believed he played only a minor role.

Via Miami-Dade Police Department

Yves Guerrier.

​Neighbors near Westview Country Club awoke to the sound of gunshots at 3:20 this morning. According to Miami-Dade police, cops responded to a domestic dispute at the small home of a 24-year-old convict named Yves "Carl Love" Guerrier. He was choking his sister and carring a wooden bat. While cops were investigating, he fled by foot. Police then found him hiding next to his silver Pontiac Grand Prix several blocks away. (On Northwest 126th Street and Northwest 18th Avenue.)

As cops approached the car, he allegedly "ran out into the middle of the roadway" and "began to fire multiple shots at the officers." Cops ran for cover and MDPD special response team showed up, at which point Guerrier surrendered.

Records show Guerrier lived in a rundown $52,234 home on the cusp of Opa Locka and was busted for third degree theft in 2004 and Culpable Negligence in 2005. A judge found him guilty in each case.

New charges are now pending. Guerrier is in custody and couldn't be reached for comment.

Update: Guerrier was charged with the attempted murder of a police officer and felony battery.

Facebook

From Mitchell's Facebook profile.

​On October 19, a near-riot erupted at the student center at Miami Gardens' Florida Memorial University. As captured in amateur video filmed by junior Jeffrey Y. Martin, security guards barricaded another student, 19-year old Emory Mitchell, in a bathroom. After students slammed through the door, an Allied Barton security guard pulled his handgun and waved it at the crowd.

Mitchell was charged with felony battery for his role in the altercation and spent more than a week in jail. In the incident's aftermath, FMU administrators seemed to side with the security guards, suspending Mitchell and issuing a statement including:

The security officers involved in the incident attempted to restrain the male student, who responded by assaulting the security officers.

That statement could become borderline libelous in about 24 hours. Mitchell's due in court on Wednesday morning. He sent Riptide the following text yesterday afternoon:

YES!!! I just got a call from my attorneys saying my charges were dismissed and I can now proceed with filing charges of my own!

His attorney Joseph Vredevelt, after first prefacing that there "should be some major developments in the case on Wednesday," gave us a non-denial denial when asked about the dismissal, telling Riptide that "the State Attorney's Office gets angry when you say stuff like that... so this is going to have to be an official no comment."

Farm-owner Roberto Aguedo Chavez.

​To squash a common misconception, the rash of illegal horse slaughter in South Florida is not the work of some sophisticated mafia. The horse killers- who have been doing their thing for years before the media took notice -- are rarely connected to each other, and they're usually just opportunistic farmers trying to make an extra buck. Like 53-year-old Roberto Aguedo Chavez and 45-year-old Ricardo Olivarez, who allegedly had the misfortune of selling ten pounds of frozen horse meat to an undercover detective in October.

Chavez and his assistant Olivarez lived together in a horse stable located on a farm at 19890 SW 180th Street. The accommodations were "crappy", in the words of a detective involved. Chavez' mother lived in a nearby trailer.

An informant told Miami-Dade cops that the cronies were peddling horse meat. A detective showed up and allegedly paid Chavez fifty bucks for a black plastic bag full of the stuff. Hence the photos of them cuffed in chairs, which come straight from the personal iPhone of a cop who was on the scene. In a freezer, investigators found an additional 240 pounds of horse meat.

​In Coral Gables, it's wine and cheese. Along Calle Ocho, it's mojitos and arroz con pollo. In SoBe, it's vodka-Red-Bull and air.

Deep in the farmlands of South Miami, apparently, they get down with Heineken and horse meat.

On July 3, an anonymous tip alerted Miami-Dade cops to this bin sitting along the side of SW 214th Street near 206th Avenue. "It looks like somebody must have been having a party," posits Det. Mario Fernandez,lead investigator of the county's horse-slaughtering phenomenon.

The revelers responsible haven't been nabbed. Click through for closer photos of the bin's contents.

​

Christopher Herwig via Flicker CC.

​The photo of Calvin Kingcade, inmate 09-9975, shows a fit 25-year-old with a black eye, a broken jaw, and a mouth fastened shut with silver wires. He drools while he talks to his mom at Ward D of Jackson Memorial Hospital. After getting jumped at Miami-Dade Pretrial Detention Center, one-fourth of his face is paralyzed.

It's not the first time Kingcade, who suffers from multiple personalities, has been assaulted at the facility. Says mother Molita Spaulding: "They need to protect my son before he dies in that jail." She has since penned letters of complaint to the Miami Department of Corrections -- and the ACLU -- reporting three beatings by both fellow inmates and guards in the past 10 months.

What's more, a court deposition implies a corrections officer employed at the center has a vendetta against Kingcade.

Jail officials did not respond to specific questions from New Times by deadline.
The Miami-Dade Pretrial Detention Center -- a brick-colored monolith on Northwest 13th Street -- has a poor reputation for keeping inmates safe. Between 2000 and 2007, at least 117 people died inside Miami-Dade jails due to violence, suicide, and poor health treatment.

A robbery in August 2008 landed Calvin Kingcade there. At M&M Supermarket on Southwest 216th Street, he allegedly "pointed a handgun" at a customer and "demanded his gold chain," according to the police report.

Don't forget to bring a towel ...to the prison showers.

​Carrying just one ounce of pot in Florida could get you 5 years in prison and a $5,000 fine. That's by far the harshest penalty on the books in any state in America. Arizona, which has the second toughest sentencing guidelines for being found with an ounce of marijuana will only put you away for 1.5 years with a potential fee of $150,000. Many states will only slap your wrists with a nominal fee or probation, and Alaska, home of Sarah Palin, won't charge you with anything. 

University of Connecticut

Just one day after his friends, family members and teammates gathered in Miami for the funeral of murdered University of Connecticut football star Jasper Howard, police have made an arrest reports The Hartford Courant. 

toshio via flickr cc

​Mary, a straight-talking senior citizen, is the kind of woman who would jump in front of a car to save a family of ducklings. So you can imagine the sense of horror when -- lying in bed one night -- she heard the sound of a mother duck in pain.

She snuck outside to investigate but found only an empty nest near her lakeside home in a five-block retirement community called Romont, near North Star Lake, where small white houses back up to canals. Feathers were strewn across the grass. And in the distance: the sound of a car engine starting.

Until last year, a hundred or so fowl nested there. Today there are fewer than a dozen. It got her thinking: Where have the ducks in my neighborhood gone?

Several months ago, neighbors began noticing a beat-up white van regularly parked by the lake. On its side, a magnetic sign read, "Pigeon and Duck Removal."

The lengths men will go to get it hard knows few limits, yet thousands of guys don't have the balls to tell their doctors they can't get it up. So enter the booming illegal Viagra trade, and like so many drugs sold illicitly, you never know if what you're getting is authentic.

Today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Miami International Airport seized 21,600 pills of what seemed to be Viagra. That's about 50 pounds, or roughly a year's supply at the Playboy mansion.

Further tests revealed the pills weren't actually Viagra. So there's no guarantee these little blue fakes, and probably hundreds of thousands of others sold illicitly, would actually help you in your time of need.

So, fellows, let this be a reminder that if you can't man up in that certain sense, at least man up and get a legal boner-pill prescription.

University of Connecticut

​The story of Jasper Howard wasn't supposed to end in murder. A gifted football player from Miami Edison Senior High, a troubled inner-city school, was recruited by University of Connecticut. He had dreams of supporting his mother, and also had a son on the way.  "All he wanted to do was just make a career of his life and help me, that's all he used to tell me. They took him away from me," his mother, Joangila Howard, told CBS4.

Photo via NefariousGirl.com

Shelley Novak

South Beach's legendary queen of drag, Shelley Novak, is normally full of sassy one-liners and puns about penis size. But she has a straight face when explaining, "It was like Friday the 13th. He came running up my stairs, chasing after me with wild, crazy eyes."

She's reliving the moment before she called police to report an alleged assault last week. Her contention: A gay man named Zachary Cerre hit her face and smashed his fist though the window of her apartment on West Avenue.

Cerre has not been charged with a crime. He swears the man in a wig is making it all up. "She's a washed-up old queen who just wants attention," he says. "Everything she told cops is a lie."

In the late '90s, Shelley Novak -- whose real name is Tommy Strangie -- was a South Beach celebrity. She shared VIP rooms with Madonna and once threw up on Ricky Martin's shoes. Most of that boozy glamour came to a halt after Gianni Versace was shot dead outside his Ocean Drive mansion in 1997.

Miami Police are on the lookout for a naked burglar.

via Wikimedia Commons

​Sometime after midnight early this morning, a white Hispanic man crawled through a window of an apartment on the 1200 block of SW Sixth Street, says Det. William Moreno, a Miami PD spokesman.

A woman sleeping inside with her two young children woke up to the man grabbing her by the hair. She apparently put up more of a fight than the nude intruder was prepared to deal with, Moreno says.

The bare-ass burglar ran out the back door, still naked and now with a bruised face.

Know anyone who breaks into homes sans slacks? Call the police at 305-471-TIPS.

Miami-Dade Corrections

Juan Carlos Portieles, a.k.a. DJ Seasunz

Juan Carlos Portieles, AKA DJ Seasunz, was denied bond this morning. He's being charged with the second-degree murder of his girlfriend, 18-year-old Jaclyn Elisse Torrealba.

Meanwhile, CBS news blog Crimesider talked to Jaclyn's cousin Daniela Torrealba, who said the family found the couple's two-year relationship, which began when Jaclyn was 16, "disturbing" and that it had "issues because he was so much older."

They also confirm what we reported yesterday, that the 30 year-old Portieles seemed to surround himself with underage girls.

According to a 17-year-old who worked with him selling tickets to a music festival, Portieles was adored by girls. These teens "loved" the popular DJ and "thought he was sweet and charming," the teen, who asked to be called "Juliette," said in an online interview with Crimesider.

Portieles would go to "all the clubs that 15- to 25-year-olds go to" and that "all he had was younger girls," Juliette said.

"Juliette" also said Portieles "drank a lot."

Natalie O'Neill

Atomik

​Atomik, a hot-tempered graffiti bomber, shakes a can of yellow spray paint and nods toward a pair of toothless Haitian men. "These guys won't mind if I tag their dumpster," he says and then scribbles his moniker onto the rust-blasted box. In an alley near NW 71st Street, the onlookers fold their arms and watch.

The stocky Kendall-bred graphic designer -- whom Riptide agreed not to name because, well, we like outlaws -- has been arrested five times for tagging rooftops, trains, and buildings. He's been chased by police dogs and hunted by helicopters. But his most recent beef isn't with the cops.

Atomik is the Kanye West of the Miami graffiti world: crazy talented, but with a reputation for pissing on other artists. After six years at the top of the well-known graffiti crew MSG -- or Miami Style Gods -- he's leaving. The reason: He and the founder, Crome, had a blowout over how to handle a turf war.

Crook, the cofounder, says, "It's like... your parents splitting up."

Facebook photo

Jaclyn Torrealba

​Well-known Miami DJ Juan Carlos Portieles, known professionally as DJ Seasunz, turned himself in to police yesterday after driving around with the dead body of his 18-year-old girlfriend, Jaclyn Torrealba. The 30-year-old Portieles is charged with second-degree murder. Read the arrest affidavit here. 

Miami Police are looking for a rapist after a brazen sexual assault on a girl on her way to school this morning.

​Just after 8 a.m., a 14-year-old girl was walking through Little Haiti along NW First Avenue. As she waited for traffic to slow at NW 57th Street, a man in his 30s approached her from behind, Officer Jeffrey Giordano tells Riptide.

The girl felt a knife in her back. The man forced her behind a house a block away, at 61 NW 57th St., where he sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill her.

Based on the victim's description, police are looking for a light-skinned black man, about 5' 11" and 210 pounds. He was wearing a white tank top and light jeans, Giordano says. And his fingernails were dirty.

Anyone with info should call police at 305-603-6300.

Via Miami-Dade Police Department

Miami-Dade cops are on the hunt for thieves with a taste for Chanel No. 5. Last week, two men allegedly broke into a commercial warehouse at 320 NE 187th Street. They stuffed $100,000 worth of expensive perfume into a white Ford Van.

(Riptide likes to imagine the crooks have a stadium full of demanding girlfriends, and were trying to give them each a special little present.)

One of the guys is in his late forties, wearing a blue striped Polo shirt. The other is thin, in his early twenties, and wearing a black baseball cap. The warehouse belonged to a Miami Businessman named Bernard Klepach, who owns firms like Concession Miami, Duty Free Service, and In Flight Services USA. He's a boat owner and a John McCain supporter. Before robbing the place, on September 27, the burglars allegedly stopped at a nearby store to buy tools for the break-in, where cameras picked up their images. Tipsters should call 305-471-TIPS.

Miami-Dade Corrections

​As you read this, Miami-Dade cops are making another arrest in relation to the rampant horse killings that have made headlines for the last year. Agriculture Crimes detective Mario Fernandez, a lead investigator of the phenomenon, tells Riptide that the squirrelly fellow on the right, 33-year old Eddy Lucio Guerra, sold horse meat to an undercover detective, which is never a good move. He'll be the fifth suspect arrested for killing horses for meat in the last three weeks.

The cops were originally targeting his dad, 53-year old Eddy Gustavo Guerra, who already has an animal cruelty conviction on his record. But Pops told an undercover cop that "selling horse is too hot right now," says Det. Fernandez. After the detective had left, though, Eddy, Jr. called and said that if his dad wouldn't make the sale, he would- unwittingly taking a jail-time bullet for his old man.

An undercover cop made two buys from South Miami's Eddy Lucio Guerra, says Fernandez, buying 10 and then 20 pounds of horse meat from him for 5 dollars a pound. The detective believes that Guerra bought the doomed horse at auction, but doesn't rule out that the meat-peddler had stolen animals to kill in the past. "These guys are opportunists," Fernandez explains. "They might buy horses at auction one day, but if they see a chance to steal a horse for meat without getting caught, they'll do that too."

Guerra, who will be charged with selling horse meat for human consumption and violating his probation, already has three felony convictions on his record, for credit card forgery, burglary, and grand theft. Cops are arresting him as he meets with his probation officer. 

By the way, if some reality TV producer isn't already working on Miami-Dade Agriculture Crimes Unit: The Horse Force, we're calling dibs now.  

You can bet there'll be plenty of riled up, sign-waving pro-lifers outside the Miami-Dade courthouse Friday. One of the country's most gripping abortion trials will begin at 9 a.m. And Riptide has some new info to add to an old case.

Back in 2006, an 18-year-old mother named Scyloria Williams went to a clinic in Hialeah called A GYN. The almond-eyed teenager was four months pregnant. Nurses inserted an instrument into her vagina to prepare for the abortion, and she came back the next day for the procedure. The doctor -- a gray-haired man named Pierre Jean-Jacques Renelique -- never showed, and Williams unexpectedly went into labor.

So, according to police, an unlicensed nurse named Belkis Gonzalez stuffed the newborn into a plastic biohazard bag, and threw it on top of the roof. (Read a fascinating New Times article about it here.) 

florida department of corrections

Belkis Gonzalez

​Cops charged with her with unlicensed practice of health care and she pled not guilty, Now she'll grace our county courtroom and a jury will decide.

The court date got Riptide thinking: Whatever happened to the good doctor Renelique? As it turns out, Florida authorities took his license away early this past year for hiding medical records linked to the case. But he's still practicing medicine. According to New York State Medicaid Inspectors, he's an OBGYN in Albany. (View the document dated June 2009 here.)

Mothers up north might want to Google search the guy before trusting him with their cervix.

Reno 911 via Flickrcc

Art imitating life?

​OK, so you're a thieving former prostitute breaking into a few cars. You smash some windows with your elbows and look for goodies you can flip quickly on the street -- a cell phone, a GPS, whatever.

Question: What get-away vehicle do you choose if you want to create the biggest, most flaming parody of Miami and yourself?

The obvious answer: Rollerblades! From the early '90s!

Michael Everett didn't get the joke. The skinny, blue-eyed 31-year-old was arrested for breaking into four cars in midtown a few Saturdays ago, after allegedly attempting a smash-and-roll. Call it a Reno 911! sketch gone wrong.

One of the cars Everett apparently pillaged belonged to Gabriel Alcala, a quirky-cute singer in a local band called the Jacuzzi Boys. On September 19, Alcala and some buddies were out drinking beer at Midtown Sports Bar on NW 36th Street. Around 3 a.m., a girl told him a "junkie-looking guy" was busting out the window of his red 2003 Dodge Neon. Alcala says he and a friend ran outside to find Everett -- in tattered clothes -- skedaddling from the scene on his inline skates. "My friend kicked him in the face and dragged him to a small field across the street," Alcala says calmly. "He was screaming and crying, and bleeding from his elbows."

Congratulations, William!

​So the Marlins are shut out of the playoffs again, and the Dolphins have yet to win a game. But when it comes to moronic behavior, South Florida is always the reigning champion. With our apologies to Tomas Regalado -- who, if you missed it, had a publicist brazenly lie to a New Times reporter about once raising funds for a convicted terrorist -- we're going to bestow our top Moron of the Week award to an accused armed robber in major need of a GPS.

The handsome fellow to the right is one William Gaston, a 55-year-old Cuban-born homeless roofer from Kentucky. (We swear, sometimes police reports read like absurdist poetry.) At 10:40 Tuesday night, according to cops, Gaston and a 50-something crony, toting a FedEx package, walked up to a home around the University Park area. When a middle-age man named Bernie Lugo answered the door, they pushed him inside and began pistol-whipping him. Lugo's 22-year-old daughter, Christine, who was sleeping in an upper bedroom, heard the commotion and came rushing downstairs, pleading with the men to stop.

The aged thugs herded them both into a bedroom and began "demanding cash and drugs." The bewildered victims responded "repeatedly" they "did not know what they were talking about."

From the police account, it seems Gaston and pal were trying to pull an Omar-from-The Wire in robbing an illegal drug operation -- but they had the wrong house. If the presence of a father and daughter didn't tip them off, an abuela certainly should have. As Gaston kept Bernie and Christine captive, his friend brought down 72-year-old Lucia Cabrera, Bernie's mom, and the aspiring robbers tied their victims' hands using plastic ties.

​Two armed unidentified males held up the 18th Ave Market at 6600 NW 18 Ave. last Thursday but were temporarily distracted by one of the victim's dogs.

Azmi Mustafa and Evelyn D'Souza were working at the store while the suspects walked in wearing face masks, brandishing pistols, and demanding money. One suspect held Mustafa at gunpoint, and another jumped on the counter and demanded D'Souza open the cash register. While she was removing the money, the victim's dog entered the fray, and the suspect took several shots at the canine but missed. Then the criminals decided to grab Mustafa's wallet before fleeing on foot.



Miami-Dade Police are still on the hunt for both. More information and photos after the jump.

William Gaston is in police custody.

​Sounds like Miami-Dade Police killed two birds with one stone yesterday morning. While searching for a robbery suspect, they came across a grow house.

Cops were responding to a home break-in around the University Park area. Two armed suspects entered the home and pistol-whipped a male victim. Police officers quickly caught one suspect, 55-year-old William Gaston, but the other fled.

While searching the neighborhood, they stumbled upon a "clandestine marijuana laboratory" at 12101 SW 31st St. They made one arrest there but think the two incidents are related only by location.

However, the second pistol-whipper is still on the lam. Cops are on the lookout for a white man between 56 and 60 years old with long white hair and a medium build. The suspect is believed to be armed and dangerous.